These are the Neo Buds Pro 2A new set of
truly wireless noise cancelling earbuds from Edifier.
They're a follow up to the original Neo Buds Pro
and they contain Pro in the name.
So I guess that makes me a professional earbud user.
Now let's find out if I am and if these
are any good.
Hi guys, I'm Matt and welcome to Kit Guru and
to my full review of the Neo Buds Pro 2
from Edifier.
As I mentioned in that quick intro, these are a
follow up to the original Neo Buds Pro which released
back in 2021.
They're not to be confused with the MB2 Pro, which
is a different model of earbud altogether.
That naming is a tad confusing.
These feature wide band, multi channel, active noise cancellation, high
res audio over Bluetooth on devices that support LHDC 5.0
and LDAC.
They've got spatial audio and head tracking.
The battery life is acclaimed up to 22 hours of
playback time including the charging case.
All in all, these things have got all the features
to put them toe to toe with some of the
top earbuds on the market.
The price for a pair of these is £130 here
in the UK.
The Neo Buds Pro 2 come in some pretty decent
packaging.
Made from thick and good quality cardboard, they're protected by
a piece of foam that looks like a tiny little
acoustic panel.
The case sits inside another piece of foam and there's
though there's no way these things are going to come
loose in shipping.
Even if the DHL bloke boots the box into the
back of his van.
There's a box of accessories sitting underneath all of that
phone and inside of there you're going to get a
USBC to a cable for charging, a carry pouch to
protect the Neobuds Pro 2.
When you Chuck them in a bag or something like
that, you get 6 extra pairs of ear tips.
That's seven in total, counting the pair that's already installed.
And then finally there's a manual and a safety leaflet.
The Neobuds Pro 2 come in both black, the colour
that I've got from review and in my ears right
now, and white.
The charging case is quite large.
It's coated in soft touch plastic with some Edifier branding
up top.
There's an LED indicator strip across the front of the
case which shows you the pairing status and then changes
when you do stuff like reset the buds to connect
them to a different phone or a different device and
that sort of stuff.
The lid and the hinge of the case are fairly
good quality.
The case closes with a satisfying third, similar to that
of a glasses case for anyone that wears glasses.
The design of the earbuds themselves is a combination of
curves and angles.
The stems have quite a sharp and futuristic look, which
is in contrast to the round driver housing and ear
tips.
I personally think the angular shape of the stems looks
a bit out of place, and I think they'd have
looked a bit better with a more rounded shape, but
that's just my personal preference.
The flat exterior of the stems though, it keeps the
touch controls easy to use, which is more important than
what they look like, and I'm glad Ed if I
chose function over form.
I'll go into those controls a little bit later in
the video.
Talking about the performance, then the most important part, the
Neo Buds Pro 2 are absolutely packed with features.
One main improvement of the original Neo Buds Pro is
the improved active noise cancellation.
They're capable of multi channel noise cancellation across a 5000
Hertz bandwidth, and the depth of that cancellation has been
improved to -50 decibels compared to the -42 decibels on
the 1st Gen.
Neo Buds Pro.
In the real world, this equates to excellent noise blocking
and fairly good ambient noise reproduction.
Like I'm wearing them now while I'm speaking to you
and I can hear myself fine.
These things really can isolate you from the outside world
and really immerse you into whatever it is you're listening
to.
Or they can let that sound through and you can
hear stuff.
The performance in the opposite way that hearing stuff is
impressive.
It's not quite to the same level as the noise
blocking setting the Neo Buds Pro 2 to ambient sound,
which is the mode I've got them in now.
That allows you to hear what's going on around you
without taking the buds out of your ears, which is
really useful for like when you're at the gym.
I don't go to the gym very often, but I
do every now and then.
When you walk in from one piece of equipment to
the next, I have to stop what I'm listening to
and then I can hear if anyone speaks to me
and stuff like that.
These things are also capable of head tracked spatial audio,
which does work well, but it's going to be disappointing
if you listen to music that hasn't been mixed specifically
for that sort of playback and that sort of listening.
Stick something on that has been mixed and mastered for
surround sound and spatial audio though, and it's a pretty
cool feature.
It adds some realism and a kind of live music
feeling to certain tracks and can make video sound as
if you're in a cinema, albeit at a much lower
volume.
These things also support high res audio over Bluetooth via
LDAC and LHDC codecs, with LDAC capable of streaming audio
up to 96 kilohertz and LHDC bumping that up to
a pretty crazy 192 kilohertz.
Unfortunately it isn't available on iPhone though as Apple don't
support those codecs.
I've got it working on my Pixel 8 Pro without
any problems at all.
I'll give you my thoughts on the audio quality in
just a second, but these things are capable of streaming
audio pretty high bitrates.
The sound coming out of the Neo Buds Pro 2
is produced by a combination of a pair of Nulls
balanced armature drivers and a pair of 10 mil dynamic
drivers, a hybrid configuration.
The balance drivers handle the high end while the dynamic
drivers deliver the bass and the mids.
That combination delivers absolutely excellent sound quality, as has been
the standard with pretty much everything that I've ever reviewed
from Edifier, I've enjoyed the sound quality and the sound
profiles from Edifier products.
So much so that I went out and bought a
pair of their W 240 TN wireless earbuds a while
ago with my own money to use when I go
to the gym and stuff like that.
The Neo Buds Pro twos just take that up a
whole load of levels.
The sound is quite flat out-of-the-box.
I added some bass and treble in the Edifier Connect
app and they just sound excellent.
One of my favorite tracks of all time is Arizona
by Kings Of Leon.
If you haven't listened to it, go and listen to
it.
It's a tune, but I've listened to it through every
piece of audio gear that I've ever owned or reviewed
in the past ten years or so, and listening to
it through these things, every single element can be picked
out.
That's partially down to the mastering from Kings Of Leon
and their producers in the studio and stuff, but the
earbuds also add to that feel by presenting every different
Sonic element in a way that's balanced and has clarity.
The bass is clean and then the high ends are
just sharp.
I've been impressed with Edifier's sound tuning in the past,
and that hasn't changed one bit with these earbuds.
They stop and start playing music automatically when you take
them out or put them back into your ears.
That's alongside the customizable tap controls that I mentioned earlier,
which are independent for each earbud.
I'm going to go into more details about what exactly
you can do with that control.
When we look at the app in a minute, there's
a gaming mode for anyone that's into mobile gaming.
I tested it in a few rounds of Call of
Duty mobile and they're they're just gaming modes and Bluetooth.
I just never get on with them.
There is a noticeable bit of latency and it it
I noticed it and it stood out and it wasn't
an enjoyable experience.
I'm not someone who usually games on their phone, but
that I just, I couldn't play like that.
I'd rather use a pair of wired headphones and also
the same goes for using them on PC.
I just wouldn't suggest with using them on a PC.
I connected them to mine using my motherboard's onboard Bluetooth
connection and it just wasn't a good experience at all.
The sound was dropping out, glitching, and it just didn't
work very well at all.
There are four mics built into each earbud to handle
phone calls and edifies.
State on their website that the Neo Buds 2 Pros
also use AI machine learning to help with reducing environmental
and wind noise.
The real life performance during phone calls was good, voices
are clear, clarity is good enough, and everyone I've asked
has said that I sound clear and they can hear
me well.
And just the fact that it's an AI machine learning
algorithm.
Is there anything left that hasn't got AI built into
it?
Moving on to speak about build quality then.
Build quality is OK.
The lid of the case feels a bit cheap, it's
quite thin and feels hollow.
The bottom feels much better quality and much more substantial
and premium.
The lid just feels a little bit flimsy.
The buds themselves feel good.
They're made entirely of plastic aside from the ear tips.
They slot into the case really well and they're held
in place with, I wouldn't say strong magnets.
They're kind of weak magnets, but it holds them in
place well enough.
I've not got any major concerns over the build quality
and while the neo buds Pro 2 don't feel as
premium as say airbuds pro, they're they're much cheaper and
considering the price, I'm happy with the quality on offer
from edifier.
So let's talk about connectivity, pairing, battery life, and the
Edifier Connect app.
Pairing these earbuds is an easy process.
Just open the case to enter pairing mode when the
buds are fresh out-of-the-box, that is, and then add them
in your device's Bluetooth settings.
If you've got an Android phone, when an Android version
6.0 or new app, which is, well, old, so you're
bound to have.
If you've got an Android phone, you'll be able to
use Fast Pair, which will pop up a notification when
the case is open and they're near your phone, very
similar to the way that Apple does pairing with their
Earpods.
The battery life is claimed to be 22 hours by
Edifier, but this is including the battery life that's stored
inside the battery that's in the case as well, and
this figure takes a dive off a Cliff when you
use Active Noise Cancellation.
The rated battery life is less than the original Neo
Buds Pro and less than my pair of W240 TNS.
The battery does drain noticeably fast when you use them,
but as soon as you stick them in the case
they'll begin charging back up again.
Both the case and the buds will charge from flat
to full in about an hour, and a 15 minute
charge will bag you 2 hours of playback time thanks
to the Neo Buds Pro 2 supporting fast charging.
The battery life disappointed me slightly if I'm honest as
it's quite noticeable how fast they drain.
Four hours of use and a full charge before you
need to stick them in the case to charge them
up.
The Edifier Connect app handles all manner of customization when
you have them connected to a phone.
It's OK, but it does have some unnecessary bloat tacked
onto it, like links to Edifier store and a bit
of a blog style page which is basically advertising space
for their products.
I'd prefer the app to just focus on its function
configuring Edifier products.
The part of the app that does handle the customization
though is done relatively well.
There are separate tabs for checking the battery life and
changing ANC mode between high, medium and low, noise cancellation,
ambient sound, wind reduction, and then you can turn noise
cancellation off altogether if you want to.
There's a tab for changing the sound profile between music
game and spatial audio modes, which that spatial audio mode
isn't available when you're you're using the high res over
Bluetooth playback mode, so you have to choose one or
the other.
Then there's a tab for applying preset or custom EQ
you can add or remove up to six decibels across
4 EQ bands.
Then finally, you can change the color of the light
on the case, which that's a little novelty feature, but
it's nice to have.
I suppose.
Separate to that, there's a settings menu, which is in
a different sort of area.
You tap this little icon at the top right of
the screen and that contains stuff like the manual adjusting
the tap controls independently for each earbud.
So you can assign stuff like next track volume up
and down Voice Assistant.
So these things can trigger your Voice Assistant on your
phone.
You can use them to change sound profiles.
You can use it to change A and C modes
and then you can tweak the sensitivity, the tap sensitivity
for each earbud as well and that just effects how
much you have to tap it for it to for
it to activate so you don't get any accidental taps.
You can change the wearing detection behaviour so they won't
stop playing when you take them out of your ears
if you don't want them to.
And you can get the Neo Bud Pro twos to
play a sound if you lose them.
You can start a shutdown timer if you're going to
wear them when you go to bed and then they'll
automatically turn off after you've fallen asleep.
And then you can do resets of the Bluetooth and
then factory reset the whole things.
The app is pretty good, but it could do with
trimming away some of the bloat and some of the
sales pitchy stuff, in my opinion.
So my final thoughts on the video overall, and yet
again, I'm very pleased if I edify our offering here.
It's disappointing that a key feature, high res audio along
with fast pairing is not available on iPhone, which a
lot of people use iPhones.
They're very popular, but that's on Apple, not on Edify,
so I can't really criticise them for it.
The sound quality is excellent and listening to a wide
variety of music through these earbuds has been a pleasure
while I've been testing them.
The battery life again is a little bit disappointing, but
the fast charging makes up for that disappointment a little
bit.
Just don't forget to charge the case and take it
with you and you'll be fine.
The build quality is OK.
It's nothing out of this world, but you're getting premium
audio quality for a non premium price.
So this was always going to be the case.
Really.
I expected it going into the review.
Spatial audio works well, but only when listening to media
that's made to be listened in that way.
Again, that's not on Edifier.
Active noise cancellation is very good and the controls to
switch it on and off are really convenient and they
make it easy to switch it on and off when
you're using the earbuds while you're out and about, like
at the gym that I've mentioned a lot of times.
I need to get down there a bit more myself,
but overall Edifier deliver quality in their products through the
sound and the pricing, and I want to see them
focus on this even more and trim some of the
fluff away like gaming modes.
I'd rather see that sort of stuff in a gaming
series of products and left out of audio focus stuff
like the Neo Buds Pro 2 O.
All in all, they're a very solid pair of true
wireless ANC earbuds at a decent price and the audio
erformance rivals some from much more expensive options like the
Galaxy and Pixel Buds.
And that's all for the video guys.
I hope you enjoyed it.
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guys, I've been Matt.
This has been my review of the brand new neo
buds Pro 2 from Edifier.
I'll speak to you in the next one.
Look after yourselves, see you later.